After all the serious stuff I write each year, I let myself have a bit of fun for my Christmas column in the local Ham & High newspaper with my annual Christmas Fairy Tale, featuring red, blue and golden elves! Of course some people think this is terribly out of order and MPs should be terribly dour and serious all the time (hello Guardian Diary!), to which I say – bah humbug!
Category Archives: Blog
Haringey's West Indian Community Centre
Caribbean time rules OK. Last year I went to the Haringey Older Citizens Afro-Caribbean Christmas lunch as the invite said at 12.30 – and we got going an hour or so later. So – one year on and smarter – yesterday I got there at 1.00 and we got going around three quarters of an hour later. So next year…
It was an absolutely packed event and very pleasant. But there is obviously a threat hanging over the West Indian Community Centre as the Government shifts on the issue of integration and desires that state funding for such segregated centres must be used now to integrate or funding will cease.
Now as someone myself who believes that funding needs to be increasingly used for joint ventures and not for separate centres, I am glad of the shift – but as ever they (the Labour Government and Haringey Council) get it wrong. You cannot say to the older generation who have gone there all their lives that they should change radically overnight. Far better to foster a growth in joint projects initially – and make them projects decided on by the groups themselves.
Anyway – it was a jolly nice occasion – as always!
It's my birthday!
A friend just phoned to say that I am in today’s birthdays in the Guardian. Sadly – they published my age, but I think they must have got it wrong by at least 10 years.
Hornsey Central Hospital
At last – finally I have my meeting with Ruth Carnell, the new London Health supremo. Her body is the one that matters in terms of making sure that if lands are sold off around the Hornsey Central Hospital site then they monies come back to develop health services on the rest. I had been wanting to meet her for some time to ask for guarantees to ring fence the proceeds for the Hornsey Central site.
At first they refused – and said I had to see the local Health Trust (Enfield and Haringey) which was useful – but they do not have the authority to say where money will go. So having got the meeting (and I am genuinely grateful to Ruth for coming over to Portcullis House and giving me her time – with 31 separate trusts to deal with she is just a bit busy) – I put the case.
Ruth was willing and is going to write a letter saying that we can have the proceeds provided there is a credible plan on the table. I guess that is as good as we are going to get and if the bid to the Government for the other £7 million that is needed succeeds – then there should be a credible plan.
Obviously whilst I had the opportunity, I put some of the points I’ve been campaigning on with my Lib Dem colleagues: the need for net gains in terms of GPs; the need for ordinary local people to have a real input in terms of what is provided on the site in terms of services; issues around fears that private providers might be brought in and about the knock on dangers this would have for the Whittington, etc.
We didn’t see eye-to-eye on all the issues – particularly the role of private providers in providing NHS services – so I’m sure there will be more debating in the future. But for now – things are moving forward in pretty much as good a direction as we could have given the rules and policies Labour have drawn up for health services. And in the New Year, my colleague – Health Spokesperson Cllr Richard Wilson – will be publishing the Liberal Democrat Prescription for Hornsey Central Hospital.
My latest writings
Up on my website now are my Christmas message for the Haringey Advertiser plus a piece for the Asian Voice about crime and terrorism.
Father Christmas called on me early this week
This morning I got a phone call from Ming – promoting me to the shadow cabinet as International Development spokeswoman. A nice early Christmas present! It’ll be a bit of a wrench leaving home affairs, as being number two in the team there has been a great job, but I’m looking forward to the challenges of the new job – especially as in these inter-connected days, what happens overseas so often ends up having an impact back home.
(More on the other moves is on the party website and on Liberal Democrat Voice).
Review of the year
Co-presented Iain Dale’s Review of the Year on internet TV – 18 Doughty Street. It was, in the end, mostly about international affairs – which given my promotion earlier in the day was quite appropriate. My new job will place me in the International Affairs Team with Foreign Affairs and Defence. The discussion ranged over Iraq, Israel and Lebanon etc – and I think I went too far in terms of being non-partisan, as in fact it was Iain who raised the Lib Dem noble position on the Iraq war. Though perhaps it’s an interesting and possibly new approach for politicians: if you don’t state the bleeding obvious – others feel obliged to do it for you? So – I found the panel (Peter Riddell, Keith Simpson and Danny Finkelstein) all acknowledging the Liberal Democrat moral (and right) position against the war in Iraq. We ranged over Gordon, Dave, Tony and Ming – and then amazingly an hour and a half had passed.
TV appearances
I’m co-presenting with Iain Dale on 18 Doughty Street TV again on Monday for a review of the year – so that should be fun!
I’ve been bumped off the Sunday Edition today. They phoned on Friday to book me saying they would phone back on Saturday. With no call back, I called them to discover that I had been bumped. This happens from time to time – and I am reasonably amenable and philosophic about being at the end of the food chain – but no call back is bad manners. Other programs do manage good manners!
How council group leaders are elected
Over at 
Liberal Review I’ve got an article on how we (Liberal Democrats) elect the leaders of our council groups. In brief:
Even where there is real choice and disagreement – and where the result determines who heads up a council, one of the most important political jobs there is – party members do not get a say.
From what I know of the rules in other parties too, the idea that a council group leader is elected only by their fellow councillors is pretty common. Yet (particularly in the Liberal Democrats), the people who end up running councils are the public office holders with some of the most power and greatest ability to have an impact on the outside world. I’ve taken part in elections of the whole local party’s membership to decide who will get to vote at the party’s conferences – but when I was a council group leader myself (in Haringey), party members were not part of the process. As I say in the piece, I have some doubts about whether this is right.
To pick up on a couple of the comments on the discussion over on Liberal Review – I don’t think the rules need be as complicated as they are for our Parliamentary candidate selection (to be a group leader you’d need to already be a councillor and so already gone through an approval and selection process anyway) and I don’t see cost as being a big issue – local parties should be writing to their members at least once a year anyway (I hope!), so any ballot could be part of an existing mailing.
Anyway – read the piece for yourself and tell me what you think!
Friday round-up
Meeting constituents to go through their issues all morning at Wood Green library. It has had a makeover – and the room I hold my surgery in is now really great. It has armchairs and sofas, a new floor, table and the atmosphere is a million times more conducive to making people feel more comfortable. Before it was cluttered with tables and chairs of the very utilitarian variety.
Am still incandescent about our Government dropping the investigation into Saudi deal. With jobs and the future security of our nation given as the reason for the moral position holding no sway, it is depressing to find out we are as bad as everyone else.
Then, thank goodness (as by now I need to lighten up) it’s off to my staff Christmas lunch and we go to a Crouch End restaurant that I had never been to before – Aix. Fantastic meal – and the desert was to die for! I rarely eat desert – but Ed (in charge of running my constituency office and my diary) recommended ice cream with honeycomb – yum!
Lynne Featherstone 